Certainly There Has Been A Significant Decrease In Activity Everywhere

It’s Friday desk clearing time for this blogger. “The median price per square foot in all but three of the 16 price groupings in Asheville was higher in 2018 than in 2017, per Mosaic. It ranges between $105 a square foot on listings below $100,000 — up almost 16 percent year-over-year — to $396 a square foot at listings north of $1.5 million, down almost 32 percent from 2017.”

“‘Sellers can’t price their house really high if they know the market is going to catch up to it. They need to be careful that prices are so high and they shouldn’t be disappointed with the prices they’re selling at, said Mike Figura, head of Mosaic Realty.”

“Prices in the Dayton region have increased for the past years as homes have flown off the market within days. But the seller’s market is starting a slow but steady shift. Buyers looking for higher-end homes of $350,000 or more are already experiencing more options, said Springboro Realtor Herman Castro. Some of the more expensive listings are having to drop up to $100,000 of the listing price to attract interest.”

“The developers behind Oceanwide Plaza, a massive $1 billion project that has ground to a halt in Downtown LA, owe more than $52 million to some of its contractors, according to a Curbed review of publicly available real estate records. ‘Obviously it’s a lot of money, right?’ said Webcor attorney William Eliopoulos. ‘We’re out a lot of money on this.'”

“Prices of detached homes in central Toronto are down almost 13 per cent from December of 2017. Prices in Vancouver have contracted as much as 30 per cent for detached homes. ‘Real estate markets across Canada are facing a headwind, says Brad Henderson, CEO of Sotheby’s International Realty Canada. ‘Certainly there has been a significant decrease in activity everywhere.'”

“In the United States, data from the National Association of Realtors shows that purchases by Canadians are markedly down, Mr. Henderson notes. ‘We’re in a holding pattern. Everybody’s in wait-and-see mode; nobody is panicking,’ says Tom Locati, a partner at Russ Lyon/Sotheby’s International Realty in Phoenix. ‘We don’t see people running for the doors.'”

“Home prices in the British capital’s prime postcodes – which include Chelsea, Islington, Kensington and Mayfair – dropped 1.5 per cent in the final quarter of 2018, data compiled by broker Knight Frank showed. That extended the decline for the year to 4.6 per cent. Prices in the best areas around the edges of central London, where thousands of new apartments are being built, fell at a near identical pace to the prime areas and are now at a five-year low, the broker said.”

“‘Both pricing and sales volumes were on a downward trajectory in the second half of 2018,’ said Tom Bill, Knight Frank’s head of London residential research.”

“A run of good fortune for the world’s top casino operators is coming to a halt as high-rollers feel the pinch from China’s economic slowdown. Sluggish Chinese economic growth and overhanging trade tensions with the U.S. have led wealthy gamblers who make up more than half of Macau’s wagers to moderate their betting habits.”

“Several Chinese high-rollers in Macau late last month said times were tougher. An electronics-factory owner visiting MGM Resorts’ Macau property said he had cut his trips to Macau in half and reduced the size of his bets to 15,000 yuan ($2,224) from 40,000 yuan. ‘There’s not as much money in the wallet,’ he said.”

“Home values in Australia’s two major property markets have fallen since the end of 2017, with the median price of a house in Sydney down 10.9 per cent year-on-year to $902,786, and 10.6 per cent to $740,425 in Melbourne, according to CoreLogic. At the same time, the number of homes advertised for sale has risen dramatically, with listings up 34 per cent in Melbourne compared to the same time last year, and 24 per cent in Sydney.”

“For buyers that means one crucial thing: negotiating power. ‘Heightened levels of homes available for purchase inevitably pushes more power back to the buyer,’ CoreLogic head of research Tim Lawless said. ‘Buyers are now in a position where they can negotiate harder, take their time in making a purchase decision and be selective in finding a home that is right for their budget and lifestyle.'”

“In Flemington, five kilometres from Melbourne’s CBD, the median house price has plunged from $1.17 million in mid-2017 to $896,000 at the end of 2018, according to the Real Estate Institute of Victoria. In Melbourne’s hipster heartland of Brunswick, the median house price peaked at $1.28 million in the third quarter of 2017, and has since fallen to $1.025 million, while houses in Chadstone plummeted from a median of $1.23 million in mid-2017 to $916,000 at the end of 2018.”

“Apartment hunters in Sydney can also take advantage of dramatic price plunges in Newtown, where the median apartment price fell by 19.88 per cent in 2018 to $665,000, and Paddington, where units have fallen by 20.37 per cent for a median value of $856,000, according to CoreLogic.”

“In Roselands, 16 kilometres from Sydney’s CBD, the median house price fell by 14.08 per cent to $973,000 over the past year, while Redfern’s median house price plummeted by 18 per cent to $1.4 million.”

“In the United States, data from the National Association of Realtors shows that purchases by Canadians are markedly down, Mr. Henderson notes. ‘We’re in a holding pattern. Everybody’s in wait-and-see mode; nobody is panicking,’ says Tom Locati, a partner at Russ Lyon/Sotheby’s International Realty in Phoenix. ‘We don’t see people running for the doors.’”

Never fear, I am here. Bring yourself to my bank (along with a document certifying that your body parts are marketable) and perhaps we – you and I, working together in sort of a, er, partnership arrangement – will discover an interesting (and, oh so lucrative) solution to your monetary woes.

Pssssst: If you happened to have spawned a very good-looking teenaged daughter then count this as a plus and, ah, be sure to bring her along on your visit.

“‘Sellers can’t price their house really high if they know the market is going to catch up to it. They need to be careful that prices are so high and they shouldn’t be disappointed with the prices they’re selling at, said Mike Figura, head of Mosaic Realty.”

Oh dear. All the speculators who bought up insanely overpriced apartments in NYC in anticipation of Amazon moving its HQ there may have underestimated growing local resistance to crony capitalism as corporate Democrats lose ground to AOC-style SJWs.

When Genie (man lift) decided to relocate their manufacturing to the Columbia Basin political insiders bought up all of the adjacent land surrounding the facility counting on their eventual expansion. They didn’t one schitt about the hundreds of blue collar jobs, just greedy profits for themselves.

– Median price, like the Case-Shiller Index is a lagging indicator.
“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.” – Mark Twain

2) “Mike Figura, head of Mosaic Realty, said Asheville and Buncombe’s market is finally hitting “a healthy place,” though housing inventory in the city and county remains low in the area’s most active price segments.

“There’s a lot of demand,” Figura said. “There are homes on the market and buyers are not having to be as frantic about buying as they were in 2016 and 2017 but there’s still a lot of competition out there and they can’t take all day either.

“Sellers can’t price their house really high if they know the market is going to catch up to it. They need to be careful that prices are so high and they shouldn’t be disappointed with the prices they’re selling at,” he said.” [What did he just say, exactly?]

– The more I hear real estate agent/broker-speak the more it sounds like Fed-speak (U.S. central bank-speak). They both say mostly nothing useful, and only serve to obfuscate the clear economic trend, which, if they’re speaking, is down and they’re generally trying to “put lipstick on a pig.”

“How do you know when a politician is lying? His lips are moving.” – Favorite Old Joke
– (Note: “The Fed” or “RE agent/broker” may be substituted for “politician” without modifying the meaning of this statement.). So, I guess, in keeping with the Mark Twain quote, there are (at least) three kinds of liars. 🙂

” … Now, as prices head higher again before the spring building season, Kuta says, “there is less demand to absorb the excess production that came on last year as a result of historic lumber prices.” At the same time, “ongoing $tructural i$$ues facing hou$ing,” including labor $hortages, lack of entry-level home$, high land cost$, $lowing economic activity, and equitie$ potentially topping, “have taken a $erious toll on growing hou$ing in the U.$.”

I always like this blog as it is full of independent thinkers for the most part. No one orders off only the left or right side of the menu as instructed by their TV leaders. With the exception of the banana and the pill. Spring is coming and home depot is laying off installers… hmmmm
Have a good weekend and my rates get back to normal!

Pukes I know tell me their phone rings off the hook every day from construction-type folks looking to do work on room additions and house repairs and such. Apparantly they are hungry for work. This news fits well with the news of the Home Depot layoffs.

One of the commenters at the ZH site is spot on, I think, with the following observation:

“I believe the one thing that the FED is most concerned about and does not talk about is the lack of foreign demand for US Treasuries. This was inevitable and will continue to get much worse and deficits continue to explode. People think they just capitulated to the market, which is true. The truth is likely more sinister though. In all of their most recent talks they have talked about making QE permanent, which essentially is just printing money nonstop and destroying the dollar. They are trying to ready the public for this because for some reason they think its better to hyperinflate the dollar instead of default on the national debt. It doesnt really matter how you sell it, admitting that you are going to print money forever will destroy the currency. It baffles me that they can be so arrogant as to think that they might be able to get away with this. They know they are going to have to do it soon so they keep coming out talking about it to make it seem like the decision wasn’t made overnight. It’s about to get real soon.”

If you want a preview of coming attractions as the Fed ramps up its debasement of the currency, read “When Money Dies” by Adam Fergusson.

“When Money Dies is the classic history of what happens when a nation’s currency depreciates beyond recovery. In 1923, with its currency effectively worthless (the exchange rate in December of that year was one dollar to 4,200,000,000,000 marks), the German republic was all but reduced to a barter economy. Expensive cigars, artworks, and jewels were routinely exchanged for staples such as bread; a cinema ticket could be bought for a lump of coal; and a bottle of paraffin for a silk shirt. People watched helplessly as their life savings disappeared and their loved ones starved. Germany’s finances descended into chaos, with severe social unrest in its wake.

Money may no longer be physically printed and distributed in the voluminous quantities of 1923. However, “quantitative easing,” that modern euphemism for surreptitious deficit financing in an electronic era, can no less become an assault on monetary discipline. Whatever the reason for a country’s deficit – necessity or profligacy, unwillingness to tax or blindness to expenditure – it is beguiling to suppose that if the day of reckoning is postponed economic recovery will come in time to prevent higher unemployment or deeper recession. What if it does not? Germany in 1923 provides a vivid, compelling, sobering moral tale.”

Although I agree with the sentiment of the ZH commenter, he’s missing one important thing. If ALL of the world’s central banks go QE at the same time then none will crash. The banks will simply make the rich richer again, no matter in what country those rich reside.

With the Breton-Woods agreement savings had value, but with the cost of the Great Society programs, Israel’s capture of the West Bank and the Vietnam war, Nixon did-away with the “gold standard,” which devalued the dollars that every other country held in reserve and average people had in savings.

I think Amazon is having serious second thoughts about the wisdom of establishing its HQ in NYC. Ever since a 28-year-old socialist bartender overthrew a 10-term corporate stooge, the writing has been on the wall for the Establishment (corporate stooge) Democrats. The demographics of NYC are now such that anyone who runs on a far-left platform of sticking it to The Man has a good shot at getting elected. The sweetheart deal Amazon thought it had with crony capitalists like Cuomo and the machine Democrat apparatchiks could easily be overcome by events now that the Gimme Dats and SJWs are in a position to bilge the Old Guard Democrats in favor of more AOC-style “progressives” promising freebies for all and sundry that “the rich” and corporations will pay for. In that political climate, Amazon would be crazy to go ahead with its planned NYC HQ.

Brandon is very charming and articulate. His #WalkAway campaign is simply about walking away from the Democratic Party and its identity politics. From what I’ve seen, he doesn’t presume to tell others where to go. A race between Brandon and AOC would be one to follow as a non-voter.

“Some 71 percent of taxpayers received refunds last year worth about $3,000 on average, Karl said, which represents the single largest financial transaction for the bulk of those people in a given year.”

Once I learned I could avoid the underpayment penalty simply by paying last year’s federal taxes divided by 4 every quarter (on time) during the next year, I haven’t had to pay a penalty for underpayment. But then my income changes little from year to year.